Business for some is a dirty word and for others is everything. The
feeling is mutual, for some in business see creativity as a dirty word,
too. But the fact is that business only succeeds by constantly bringing
new things that are better than their competitors’ offerings to customers
who are prepared to pay for this advantage. Business needs creativity even
more than artists. And that’s saying something.

See also

Quotes

‘But there is only one person I blame for getting shafted, and that’s myself.
I went into the deal which I thought would secure the future of Orange Aids with
culpable impetuosity. I had been used to doing business on a handshake and my
work of honour, and I made the error of actually believing what the men in the
pin-striped suits told me.’

‘Never hire or promote in your own image. It is
foolish to replicate your strength and idiotic to
replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those
whose perspective, ability, and
judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it
requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.’

‘The way innovating companies are designed leaves ambiguities, overlaps,
decision conflicts or decision vacuums in some parts of the organisation. People
rail at this, curse it–and inventinnovative ways to overcome it.’

‘A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not
because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the
responsibility for converting it from words into action.’

‘The trouble with much of the advice business is getting today about the need
to be more vigorously creative is, essentially, that its advocates have
generally failed to distinguish between the relatively easy process of being
creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being
innovationist in the concrete.’

‘We know where most of the creativity, the innovation, the stuff
that drives productivity lies--in the minds of those
closest to the work. It's been there in front of our noses all along while we've
been running around chasing robots and reading books on how to become
Japanese--or at least manage like them.’